JOHN MARSHALL. THE life of Marshall presents a pic- | a man of vigorous sense and cultivated ture of thought and action; of quiet mind. The reading of a country gen domestic virtue, and of public honor; tleman, at that time and place, judged of the arts of war, and of peace; of by the standard of our own day, would the two great eras of America, the probably not be considered very extenRevolution and the Constitution; upon sive or profound. We have enlarged which the mind may long feed with and refined these matters till the liteprofit and pleasure. We shall find rature of the last century, the books of him in many relations to the State and our forefathers, are thrown quite into the public, but always the same sim- the shade. It may be questioned, how ple, truthful man. ever, whether we have gained much in The family of Marshall occupied but the education of youth by heaping a a humble position among the large score of sciences and languages upon landowners of Virginia; nor were they the infant mind; substituting German among the earliest settlers of the coun- speculation and a Germanized style for try. His grandfather, a native of the simpler forms of the old reading, Wales, came to Westmoreland County, which could be readily understood and about 1730, and married there Eliza- safely imitated. We are ourselves beth Markham, a native of England. old-fashioned enough to prefer seeing His eldest son, Thomas, inherited the Oliver Goldsmith in a boy's hand to Westmoreland farm, of no great value; Thomas Carlyle, and even much beand on coming of age removed west-rated Alexander Pope to Alfred Tenward, to Fauquier County. There, nyson; and this without any disparagemarried to Mary Keith, a relative of ment of these contemporary worthies. the wide-spread family of the Ran- We have been led to this remark by dolphs, he established himself on a small finding the first book of the great farm at Germantown. At this place judicial mind of Marshall to be Pope's John Marshall was born, September "Essay on Man," which, with some of 24, 1755. He was the eldest of fifteen his "Moral Essays," the boy, at the children, all of whom, we are told, age of twelve, transcribed under his possessed remarkable intellectual abi- father's direction. It became the seed lity. They doubtless owed much of it of no unimportant poetical cultivation, to the superior character of the father, for Marshall, it appears, little as his public labors would seem to bear wit- sent to Westmoreland, to the care and ness of the fact, was something of a instruction of a clergyman named votary of the Muses. Such vigorous Campbell, when he became a fellow forest growths, indeed, huge evergreens pupil with James Monroe, the future Preof a hardy clime, display no gay blossoms sident. On his return home, he found, on their branches, nor sport with the according to a custom not unusual in flowers at their feet; but, deep down that period among intelligent settlers, in the soil, there will be found some his father entertaining a newly arrived permanent spring of Helicon to water parish clergyman in his home. This their roots. The late Judge Story, gentleman, named Thompson, became who was fonder of verse than Marshall, the youth's instructor. It will be rein an article written on the Chief Justice while he was yet alive, speaks with affection of the poetical pursuits of his great exemplar. "The love of poetry," he says, "thus awakened in the boy's warm and vigorous mind, never ceased to exert a commanding influence over it. He became enamored of the classical writers of the old school, and was instructed by their solid sense, and their beautiful imagery. In the enthu siasm of youth, he often indulged himself in poetical compositions; and freely gave up those hours of leisure to those delicious dreamings of the muse, which (say what we may) constitute some of the purest sources of pleasure in the gay scenes of life, and some of the sweetest consolations in adversity and affliction, throughout every subsequent period of it." We may attach some importance, also, in Marshall's education, to the mountain scenery of his youth, his father having removed, in his boyhood, from Germantown to a still more westerly position at Oak Hill, on the declivity of the Blue Ridge. Schools, of course, there were none in such a situation. The youth, indoctrinated, as we have seen, in Pope and Dryden, was membered that James Madison derived similar advantages under like circumstances from the Rev. Mr. Martin. Indeed, the clergyman, in the colonial time, more than any other man, may be said to have educated the mind as well as looked after the morals of the country. In these two years of clerical instruction in Westmoreland and at home, Marshall acquired some slight knowledge of the Latin language. It was, however, sufficient to form a basis for his vigorous mind to work upon, and he did not, in after life, neglect the opportunity. The clarion call of Lexington now echoed even to the distant recesses of the Blue Ridge, seconded in the human breast by the voice of spring. The young Marshall went forth at the first summons to assemble the militia-men of the region. There was already some organization of the kind which his father had formerly commanded. The son, with the title of lieutenant, found himself at the head of the muster. He related to the rude frontier cultivators the story of Lexington, and taught them a few simple military movements. He then, we are told, joining familiarly with his companions, played that well known game of quoits which lightened formed for the Continental service. the toils of the Chief Justice half a cen- Marshall was appointed, July, 1776, tury afterwards. It was characteristic First Lieutenant in the 11th Virginia of his hardy mountain habits, which regiment, and in the following May strengthened his constitution for a long was promoted to a captaincy. His life, that he walked ten miles to the muster, performed its exercises, engaged in these athletic amusements, and returned home on foot by sunset of a May day. The young soldier was soon called into active service. Dunmore, the deposed Governor, was in force in the southern counties near Norfolk, and it was necessary to dislodge him. Companies were raised throughout Virginia. The elder Marshall commanded one of these, in which his son was lieutenant. The flag of the troop, we are told, presented a coiled rattlesnake, with the mottoes, "Don't tread on me!" and "Liberty or Death!" The last words were painted on the breasts of the green hunting-shirts of the company. The men were armed with rifles, tomahawks, and knives.' A costume, this, somewhat unlike the peaceful toga of the Chief Justice. Marshall was present with this company, and, with the rest of his companions, gave a good account of himself at the battle of Great Bridge, when Fordyce and his men were slain or put to flight, and the region about Norfolk cleared of the forces of Dunmore. This was the State warfare in which Patrick Henry was engaged, though he was not intrusted with this particular command. Immediately after, companies were 1 A Sketch of the Early Days of John Marshall, by Mr. John Esten Cooke, of Richmond, in the New York Century. father, Colonel Marshall, was with Washington in the campaign in the Jerseys of 1776. The son joined Washington's army the next year, and engaged in the movements for the protec tion of Philadelphia, which, baffling Howe in New Jersey, were destined to defeat at the Brandywine. Marshall's company was engaged at the outpost at Iron Hill, and on the banks of the river, where it distinguished itself by some gallant skirmishing. The elder Marshall fought nobly with his regiment, both father and son reaping their honors in the adversities of that September day. The son was also actively engaged in the pursuit of the British and in the subsequent retreat at Germantown. He was with the He was with the army in its terwinter at Valley Forge, was in the action at Monmouth, was at Stony Point and Paulus Hook; so that few to whom war was not their sole profession, saw more service than Captain Marshall. He had, of course, now be come intimate with Washington, in participating with him in these hardships and deeds of valor, of which his pen afterwards presented so faithful a record. We hear, also, of his acquaintance with Hamilton, and of his civic talents in the camp as Counsellor and Judge Advocate. In 1779, the Virginia companies being virtually dissolved by the expiration of the term of service of the men, Marshall returned to his State to wait new opportunities of service. rible He now availed himself of the oppor- himself." For nearly half a century tunity to apply himself resolutely to study. He attended a course of law lectures by George Wythe, afterwards Chancellor, and a course on natural philosophy by the President, Mr. Madison. In the vacation of 1780, he left the college and obtained a license to practise law. The invasion of Arnold, however, called him again into the field. He finally, in 1781, resigned his commission. On the termination of the war he devoted himself to the law, and rapidly advanced in the profession. In 1782, he was elected a member of the State Legislature and of the Executive Council. this lady accompanied her husband in the journey of life, in a union unhappy only in its termination. Marshall, now in the pursuit of his profession, took up his residence at Richmond, though he represented Fauquier and afterwards Henrico County in the legislature; his attention thus being divided between politics and the law. It was a time of much agitation in the unsettled relations of the States to one another, and to the loose central authority. Marshall looked clearly to union; by the side of Madison, he defended a suf ficient central authority. His experi ence in the army must have shown him The next year saw him married to the weakness of the old confederation Miss Mary Willis Ambler, daughter of in making provision for the common the State Treasurer, a young lady of defence; his logical mind must have whom he became enamored in his early pointed out to him the legal necessity of military expedition against Dunmore's a properly defined constitutional governforces, in a visit to York. At the ment; and union, moreover, seems to period of this first engagement, he was have been with him a matter of instinct an ardent young lover of nineteen, she and feeling. His own expression should a fair maiden of fourteen. A tradition never be forgotten. "I had grown up of the courtship is preserved, with con- at a time," he wrote long afterwards to genial sentiment, in the sketch of Mr. a friend, "when the love of the Union Cooke, to which we have already re- and the resistance to the claims of ferred. "An attachment was formed Great Britain were the inseparable at first sight. The young Marshall inmates of the same bosom; when endeared himself to the whole family, patriotism and a strong fellow feeling notwithstanding his slouched hat and with our suffering fellow citizens of negligent and awkward dress, by his Boston were identical; when the amiable manners, fine talents, and maxim-'United we stand, divided we especially his love for poetry, which fall'-was the maxim of every ortho he read to them with deep pathos. In dox American. And I had imbibed proof of the ardor of his character and the tenderness of his attachment, he often said 'that he looked with astonishment on the present race of lovers,' so totally unlike what he had been these sentiments so thoroughly, that they constituted a part of my being. I carried them with me into the army, where I found myself associated with brave men, from different States, who |